EU4 - Ideal Army Composition - Is Cavalry worth it? | Combat Basics Guide - Part 3 | Tutorial
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- čas přidán 8. 04. 2019
- Part 3 of a 4 part series on basics of combat and combat related mechanics. In this part, we discuss ideal army composition and why use of cavalry should be situational. Learn a bit about Army professionalism as well!
Part 1 - Combat Basics - • EU4 Basics - How Comba...
Part 2 - Unit Pips/Siege - • EU4- What are Unit Pip...
EU4 wiki pages-
eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Land_units
eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Technolo...
Arumba's cavalry video - • EU4 Cavalry - Why they...
Mods used - Graphical Map Improvements, Stellaris UI Font
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For those wondering, Poland has many reasons why it completely and utterly ignores most issues for CAV: It simulatiously gets a -10% CAV cost reducction, a base -10% all regiment cost reduction, CAV to INF ratio boost, and a fucking 33% boost to CAV combat ability. This makes them much cheaper...expect it gets even better, because this is ignoring ideas, policy, and estates.
So with ideas, we can get aristocratic ideas. The first pick in it is Noble Knights. Which is 10 bonus to both the cost and CAV CA. Meaning we now have a 30% reduction in cost for poland by the time we have 15 ideas. Thats nice. Now, we dont get any more CAV buffs from Artiso ideas. But between aristocratic and polish ideas, we get a nice 58% boost to manpower. So lets take Economic Ideas next. Which realy just makes things more affordable by just making us more money, with a very nice maintenance reduction near the end being most relevant. We can also take quantity. We have in quantity an extra 10 cost reduction to all divisions. We also just add another 50% to manpower, for 108%, because you naturally need to draft their mother as well. We can also get Quality for more CAV CA. Also, get espionage.
This puts it at 40% for CAV and 20% for INF and ART. This means INF costs 8, CAV 15, and artillery 24 ducats respectively. The most important economically being actually the artillery, due to artillery being just that expensive. There was a reason why it was the Kings last argument: only the king usually could afford them in reasonably large numbers. But we arent done yet.
Because I had you take economics for a reason. We get to a policy with that: Court of Wards and Liveries. This gives us a 10% tax increase and another 10% buff to cav cost. Which is now at 50% for poland, at 12.5. Which is much more reasonable. We can also get another 20% CAV CA from an espionage policy.
And still isnt actually the Winged Hussar's final form. Because the Cossacks now get to enter into this. At max possible buff, the cossacks provide yet another buff to CAV cost of 20%, CAV CA gets another 20. And we get yet another ratio boost.
For CAV boosts, we have 93% at max buff. Cost is down 70%, and we have a 70% CAV to INF ratio. When poland wants to make a CAV regiment, they pay a grand total of 7.5 ducats per CAV. Their INF costs 8. It is literally cheaper to use CAV over INF. Poland therefor should keep about 40% of their frontline as INF, and the Rest CAV.
For other idea groups, take humanist to ignore rebels, defensive because BTW, did you notice you end polish ideas with Elan, and what isnt more hilarious then making your maintaince costs even cheaper, forsts cheaper, and having just an extra chunk of morale. Then choose either trade if you want more money or offensive if you just want to stack even more discpline because between the other ideas and policies you have, this means 20% Disc.
Now, you might be able to get CAV cheaper, but this requires having a parliament with expand the army as the chosen law, trading iron, using expansion and trade as the later ideas, somehow being tengri....but you can pretty much only get 2.5 more off it. This is because while your cost reduction will hit over 80%, this is lessthan the hard-coded min cost of CAV at 5 ducats. And that is all you can do by this point: regiment cost reductions. Which are more useful for ART by this point over CAV. And since this requires expansion and trade ideas, when you are already having to decide between humanist, administrative, defensive, and offensive...and have only 3 idea group slots left.
TD;LR: Polish ideas are very strong, but it requires basically using most your idea groups to make it work.
Men i have 83% cav combat with aristocracy the winged hussars,thr nobels and the cosacks,etc.i conquest almost all moscovia,novogord,i conquest the city of estambul from the otomans,take all the teutonic order and the half part of livonia(the other part denmark take it) and i have bohemia as PU and moldavia so the problem i have is that austria is my ally but i want to figth them and they are very strong(have almost all of france)i want too to conquest denmark and is weaker but they have dtong alliances and i have a PU justification of war in spain but thet are the first great power(i am the second)so you think i should create all my army of cav and a lot of artillery or do a mix(actually i have for example a army of 23 inf 26 cav and 4 art and i destroy all my enemys but i think i need more potential to win austria and spain)
SORRY FOR MY ENGLISH I AM SPANISH
Cavalry is an artificial means of extending your manpower and improving your pure force strength in the first half to 2/3 of the game. It gives a marginal improvement over the combat strength of equivalent infantry while *not going over your force limit*. There are *many* times where you're limiting factor is being purely strong enough to defeat enemy stacks and finish battles quicker to save manpower and you are more than happy to pay the extra ducats cost.
This!
I usually have a ratio (non-cavalry/cavalry) of 80/20 early game and 90/10 late game.
I imagine the flanking bonus still could help late game (also for artillery not getting into the first row), but could be wrong, though.
@@romano-britishmedli7407 late game cav loses the 1v1 fight against infantry. If you fight an army that is at least 3 under combat width you'll win anyway, so the flanking doesn't really matter much.
You should really make a video about mercenaries
Definetly
But not soon, mercenaries are being reworked.
Grevyalres X no as a matter of fact they aren’t anytime soon the devs said that is what they are planning to do that doesn’t mean that this will happen in the next dlc/update we have no eta as of now so it might take a while
I think they should focus morr on buffing cavalry at least by like 50%. Having it being 250% the strength of infantry can way too favor nation's which can afford it, example big op nation's like ottomans to just stomp more than they already do.
@@icencold3447 It's confirmed to happen in the next update now. forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/eu4-development-diary-6th-of-august-2019.1229799/
Good ol' Artlery.
4:22 Okay thanks for this explanation, it's really enlightening. And I can't believe that this is how the game actually works. If I have decimated the enemy line to the point that my cavalry can't find enemy pips within flanking range, and they will just be useless until the end of battle, that's just stupid isn't it? In real life, those cavalry units would try to encircle the enemy right?
Thanks for this guide! You're pretty good at explaining eu4.
I agree. Definitely has the best Eu4 guides on CZcams
I drill purely to use the slacken recruitment, having an extra pool of manpower has saved me in countless of wars..
Drilling artillery is quite useful because artillery don't suffer attrition if they are grouped with infantry, nor do they suffer from combat losses if the front line holds.
Having 2 regiments of cavalry in a stack is quite useful when your flanking range is maxed out, since they can attack without being retaliated against.
Short Answer - Use them until mil tech level 9 then go for infantry with 1 artillery for siege then after mil tech 16 use infantry with artillery
Start as Yeren, form Manchu, use 100% cav front line. Recruit 2 or 3 infantry units for assault and 2 cannons for breaches. Enjoy your invincible army with no military ideas. By tech 16 you will own nearly half the world.
Thank you for the tutorial!
I'm very curious about your opinions on mercenaries, please make that your next video. I dont think I use them right
You don't use them when you have 0 manpower, you make you mix regular infantary with mercs, in África, India, Indonesia campains you consome soo much manpower and you normaly will get money from trade/gold. ALWAYS make them infantary, because you will be using them to focus in your manpower economy for constant conquest. Some nations with lots of manpower don't really need all infantary trops, but malaya, great britan and holland has more formsto have money them manpower.
they're changing them soon anyways
@@wandy3606 I had really shitty military ideas as Britain, since I didn't pick any, but with even the strongest military ideas the AI will always lose, if you send a full combat width inf + full arty back row stack. They are not smart enough to stack all their troops together and mercs only waste money so you can use that stack indefinitely, if you're rich.
Hi Radio Res. Could you please review the mechanics of estates at some point as well? Not in the Combat Guide obviously but some other EU4 series. Thank you!
Once you get to mid game, not using as many mercs means you can afford to constantly drill your troops and stay at higher maintenance. Mid game, I usually don't need all of my stacks in any average war, so I'll have a main stack with a few mercs mixed in, then another stack or two for more sieging and reinforcements, then 1 or 2 stacks tucked away doing nothing but drill and build army professionalism and occasionally stamping out rebels. Seems to work ok.
keep up the good work
Stable video👍
Nice Video
Once you get 20% professionalism you get click to boost drill by 40% for 15% increased army maintenance specifically for the reason you mentioned about it being weak.
The issue is if it's strong enough then it's overpowered, and if its weak no one uses it.
Would be really cool, if cav could attack the back row, if it isn't under attack. So you could put more cav in your army, which does more damage, so your combat width will be larger than the enemy's at some point and your investment will pay off.
The moment i get the tech for Artillery i build 1 or 2 in each army and i keep that until people have way more Artillery than me or i have a pretty good economy.
Short Answer: Not really Unless you are a Horde, Poland, Mamluks or any other nation with very high bonuses to Cavalry, Especially Poland which can get up to 93% Cav. Combat Ability and Cav is cheaper for them. Otherwise you should have some cav, but not much of it- 4 units per army should be more than enough and really less than that is good. Cav is much better in the Early to Mid Game as it has more Shock and Morale than Infantry, but over time it goes down, to the point where Cav is Actually worse than Infantry in terms of Cost vs Pips. That is once again except for Poland and other Cavalry Specialist Nations.
Yeah, so in summary, by the late game, you should not have cavalry in your army, since by that time, infantry has better pips anyway. By late game, not only are they 2.5 times more expensive, but they are also less effective in battle, so unless you’re playing a nation with powerful cavalry bonuses then you should remove cavalry from your armies in the late game
9:48 2000 hours and I *just* learned that arty gives its defensive pips to the frontline. Paradox games really are something.
make video whats the best way to use mercenaries, when i play i am not sure when and how much mercenaries should i hire, for example do i disband them while i am at peace?
*ARUMBA HAS ENTERED THE CHAT
usually my main army comp by 1500 is 15k infantry, 4k cavalry, and 8k artillery. then every twenty years or so I add an additional 2k artillery and 2-4k infantry, and keep the cavalry the same. why do I keep them even though they're "useless"? because they provide a very convenient way to detach a small portion of my army to seige down other non-castled provinces, and most AI armies are small enough through most of the game to where the cavalry can still be useful for flanking bonuses. also the 15-4-8 scaling model is just low enough to not suffer attrition in most european provinces, and later on in most other provinces yet still be combat efficient in most scenarios, either against natives or against other powers that don't have enough to beat you outright. They also make a very efficient independent force that can easily be combined into other corps of the same comp for bigger battles, yet still maintain enough strength to conduct independent operations and secure multiple objectives without suffering massive attrition. the cavalry in each of these scenarios is there for two reasons: they provide flanking and better shock bonuses in battles, and they can be easily split off to back-cap.
Pdx could fix this by moving the cav unit toward the center if it doesn't have anyone else to fight within its range
It makes logical sense that cavalry decreases in power later in the game, as the invention of guns made the cavalry's mobility less effective vs the sheer power of muskets during that period of time.
I think/wish that cavalry has some more usefulness in the mid game then declines rapidly afterwards. Maybe a readjustment of military tech to give +1 flanking range at earlier levels (+3 @ mil tech 15 and +4 @ tech 20?). This would be one way to make calvary more influential in the mid game and would be a better transition into infantry + artillery compositions. I also wish there was a guerrilla warfare mechanics at this point that cavalry could use. While historically guerrilla warfare doesn't become more utilized until the early 19th century, the time frame for EU4 has advancements occur a little quicker than history imo, so adding guerrilla warfare tactics in the game would be interesting and make combat more tactical.
Actually cavalry played a critical importance until the introduction of machine guns and cars as even during the Napoleonic Wars cavalry was necessary to run down fleeing opponents and make a decisive victory possible, it was also critically important in scouting and logistics. Although I don't really know how they could make those realities work with EU4's combat system.
Addind cav flanking range doesn't really matter. It only means you win battles a little quicker, than you would have easily won anyway.
This is my army composition 6 infantry 3 cavalry 3 Cannons ,mid-game infantry 7 cavalry2 cannons 3, late game infantry 7 cavalry 1cannons 4
switzerland guide!
Can you please make a tutorial on mercenaries?
VERY nit-picky here: I've heard several guides saying that cav is 250% MORE expensive than inf. but if it costs 2,5x the amount isnt it just 150% more expensive?
Maybe guide on Madyas
Does Professionalism lock? Meaning if I get to 100 and have it drop down to say 20%, do I continue getting the 40/60/80/100% bonuses?
No u loose them
So I have a question: Mughals get 20% calvary combat ability and I tent to pick Aristocratic, which adds 10% more. My cav is not winged hussars, but it is a solid cav. At the beginning I tend to have 5 mercs inf, 5 regular inf and 5 regular cav. At which point is it worth ditching the cav then?
Mughals should keep cav around most o all of the game, they get almost the same bonus to cav Poland does, as while Poland has 23% more cav combat ability than it has infantry combat ability, Mughals have 20% more. So I'd say keep using cav. Maybe even replace some mercs with cav?
In that case never
I usually choose a cav just because of national ideas that give cav CA.
So basically use cavalry if you have big bank and a limiíted force limit. Late game when you will most likely not fill your force limit up all the way and its not an issue infantry is always better because 2x infantry is better than 1 cavalry
So, I've always used manpower and drilling with focus on achieving 100% professionalism and I avoid mercs like the plague because if a whole army is raised my professionalism plummets. I admit that I genuinely don't understand the use of mercenaries at all. Then again, I also avoided corruption like the plague before I took advantage of its bonus to unrest.
Cody Freese if you can afford it you want all/some of your infantry to be mercs to save manpower. artillery and cavalry mercs are too expensive especially to reinforce so regiments for those are better
as the game uses infantry to be your " main" front line they are suffering the most from every battle, this way you are losing lot of your manpower in every battle, if your infantry lane ( we also can say : if your frontline ) is made from merceneries your manpower is saved
drilling definitely needs some tweaks
sunset invasion :D
I wish you had done a calculation on artillery like you did with cavalry.
He probably won’t do it just because there are simpler “rules” when it comes to artillery. Basically, until tech 14 (I think that’s the one), artillery is pretty much only good for sieging. Obviously it makes your stacks stronger, but like cavalry, it just isn’t worth the cost. Once you get tech 14, artillery becomes much stronger, and you want your stacks to have artillery. You should always have a couple more front line troops (infantry or cavalry) than artillery because it gets shredded if it’s forced to the front, but as long as you have that, artillery is worth it
@2:41 .35 + .05 = .40 All day long. Where did you get .85 from? What kind of maths do you guys use where you are from? We use Arabic arithmetic.
He says 0.5 and the text shows 0.5.
Isn't the point of Calvary that it makes better use of the force limit and manpower? It's a trade off. Ducats for more maximum strength, given your manpower and force limit. So, ideally, if you have money left over after maxing out your force limit, you would spend that money on on Cavalry.
Cav is manpower efficient though, really only worth it early game
Yeah by late game it has no place in the army, unless you have bonuses
Hi Radio Res. Could you please do as Mallaca form Malaya. Thank you
(sorry if my English is bad)
Drilling = what you do in multi player when you are low manpower or afraid to Dec because your main enemy will make a two front war.
naval combat is spam heavies to force limit
inFANtry is OP!
Radio res how can I give province to my subject or which DLC did I need? Pls help
You could Just sell them to your subject for free. You have to click in the subjects diplomacy window and then there should be the option to sell provinces somewhere.
@@charge3808 yea but I will lose prestige
@@charge3808 but thank you
this just made me wanna play another bharat game. so fun to blob
Doing it right now. The mission tree with dharma DLC is probably the best. Can't wait to reach the end blob from Persia to Burma😅
Hindustan has a nicer map colour imo, but to each their own.
If a tank is 10.000.000x more expensive than an infantry, it should hit 10.000.000x more damage
Hakan Çağan Çoban no
Is the 4th guide out? i cant find it...
Nope, not worth it I guess
I don't think you lose professionalism anymore... in the early days you had to keep a 1 sized army drilling full time to avoid decay, but now it just never decays.
prof never decyed, and he only said that drill decay.
@@tjaenig oof. OP has been wasting 0.21 ducats a month for no reason.
So with Poland what army composition would you have?
100% winged hussars obviously
Also only charge from mountain side.
All Hussars, then allies & vassals provide infantry.
So the point of cavalry is basically just to protect against enemy cavalry. Because even in the later game, if you dont have cav, your armies will get melted.
Nope. Late game cav loses the 1v1 against infantry, so having cav in your armies will weaken the army. Countries with big cav bonuses are excluded from this.
Cav is good for the early game to maximise your strength if you can fill the entire combat width.
Great info, but significantly outdated. Primarily, mercs cannot be integrated into regular armies. I've never been very dependent on merceneries, so I'd love to see am update to this video to see if this strategy still holds true
.
Did you ever make that naval combat guide? It's not on the playlist
EU4 navy: so pointless that nobody bothers to make guide about it
I haven't yet. I was hoping there might be some naval changes in the new patch, but it doesn't seem likely.
"Is cavalry worth it?"
Short answer: No
Longer short answer: Only if you're Poland.
Without even watching the video I expect that the best army is the merc army.
Banner cav or banner inf is the best army by far. +10% discipline and no manpower to reinforce (like mercs). Morale becomes completely irrelevant because of the ridiculous power of these units. You can stack wipe armies while bankrupt with no problems and effectively infinite manpower.
I disband cavalry and replace them with mercs
To be honest, I drill my armies and go to 100% professionalism as much for the bonuses as for roleplay. ;)
I just like the idea of having a strong, perfectly-trained army and not a bunch of peasants with muskets.
>Playing Mongolia in 1500s on VH with no allies and bankrupt
>Ottomans DoW me because I only have 60k units
>40 of the are banner cav 100% front line cav
>they proceed to run away from me
>finally catch them, wipe 100k Ottomans while bankrupt
>they white peace
Yeah I'd say Cav is pretty good.
No, cav is not good. Mongolia has good cav because they’re in the nomad tech group. That is the only tech group in which cav are overall worth it, with there only being a few nation-specific exceptions beyond that like Poland
IN-fn-tree.
Isn’t cavalry’s speed much higher than infantry ?
I don't think it would hurt to have 2k cav per army
Unfortunately, the deployment in this game is kind of shitty. The cavalry won’t push infantry out of the way when they’re trying to flank, meaning that if you start killing your enemy’s flanks with your cav, they’ll kill the unit and then sit around. The deployment is what really pushes cavalry over the edge from “expensive but niche” to just downright bad for anyone that doesn’t get bonuses to them
Why not have 40 inf 4 cav and 40 artillery for late game ?
Well you would want more infantry, something like 44 infantry because they take a lot of casualties and 40 cannons, cavalry in the late game is useless because the combat width will be already full
R-TILL-err-EE....you're welcome. LOL
Why is manpower always forgotten in the cav debate. A cav unit costs the same manpower as an inf unit, and gives more power. Manpower is so much more valuable than money. And then with force limit on top of that. The arumba can argument is stupid.
Since you based your thesis around money couldn't i just say, "cavalry is worth it late game because money is irrelevant and thus not a valid point for the argument" as an antithesis?
If you want to use something that costs 2.5x times more than infantry. And is worse than infantry.. Then sure go ahead use it lategame.
@@sanderleander3367 how is it worse?
@@ingratus8160 It does deal less damage then inf in the late and late mid game. So it just becomes obsolet. Edit: Also cav has a small amount of fire pipsin general, so even if they should inflict a lot of damage in the shock phase, they get unproportionally damaged in the first fire phase and therefore can´t really utilise their higher shock damages becasue a unit with only 3/4 of it strength left deasl 1/4 less damage in total. Superficially their high shock damage in mid game might seem beneficial but it actually is not
@@Ulas_Aldag I checked again and realized, that I completely forgot what the pips later on look. It really is not worth it for western technology group and only for eastern until you got cossacs or winged hussars, as the units after are also not worth it. So well, shit.
Prussia: NO!
my polish&hungarian space hussars eats them for breakfast
If game calculated how to position your cav each. Good Luck with fps drops in each Day of each battle.
Yeah, I think drilling is pretty useless either. It usually goes back to 0 after one or two battles and even if you siege it is slowly decreasing.
You also always have to plan months ahead.
I just do it as something to do. Army professionalism can be useful.
And you get a respectable buff that gives you an edge in the late game from full drilled units.
Also, I didnt mention that the slacken recruitment button is awesome. Losing professionalism for extra manpower.
I hate drilling because my generals ALWAYS die while drilling -_-
You should be drilling your armies when at peace anyway. If you get to 100% professionalism, you get a nicer army drill gain modifier, which makes it take only a few months to drill up. Those first few battles decide the momentum of the whole war oftentimes, and so having a 10% bonus to everything in them isn't something to scoff at. If you play multiplayer, having full drill when your opponent doesn't can mean dealing an extra 100k or more casualties in the first few battles midgame.
Unconvinced! You didn't compare an army with cav compared to an army without if you ignore costs. Why would you ignore costs? Most countries in the game can easily afford cavalry, most times that the cost is important is if you have shit land or are bad at money management. Yes cav cost more but if you have an army with as much cav as possible it will easily beat an army without cav!
I'm late lol
Hi
ur rapid mate
@@Rueee ok
I disagree with the arty info you provide. I usually get at least 4 ASAP. It basically guarantees a stackwipe against an army with lower numbers and little or no arty.
Yeah either 4 or 6 arty early on makes a big difference, but mainly in sieges.
Go ask Mongols
The mongols is a horde, which gives +20% Calvary CA. for other nations it isn't really worth it.
Are you indian?
Short answer, no, not even slightly.
Infantry - pronounced In fun tree.
Not being a smart arse
Artillery - pronounced Are till a ree
Are tea lair E
rge24491 Lol most people pronounce it “in-fen-tree,” although the sounds are a bit blurred, so overall it usually turns into a mix of “fen” and “fun.”
There's more costs than just money you dingus. Cavalry costs the same manpower and force limit, which is often the bigger limiter than money.
Why do you keep saying in faan try ?
He isn't a native English speaker, and it is still clear enough to understand.
For the same reason that you will pathetically mispronounce words from my native language if you try.
Is Calvary Worth It?---No.
It depends on whether you like to win battles. If no, then no. If yes, then yes.
Poland, Hungary, Steppe Nomads like to know your location
@@puruttyaaa Countries with cav bonuses don't count
Referring to Arumba is a thumb down. Your vid was excellent, just avoid this :-)
Edit: also saying mercs are broken is just inviting less fun in the game. Really think about what you say in context of the result on the game.
He absolutely cannot pronounce artillery, cavalry, or infantry. Might should have picked a different subject to make a video on.
Than why you click on this video?🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣